Change
by NaNaNaNaNatman
Summary: This is a time-travel fic in which Harry's fifth year and the Marauder's graduating year become intertwined. All-canon ships. Rated M for violence and possible sexual content in later chapters.
1. Chapter 1

Change

Chapter 1

James Potter was in high spirits as he picked up his Transfiguration book and rose to his feet, satisfied that he would destroy his transfiguration NEWT so thoroughly at the end of the year that the test proctor would swoon. He tossed the book in his bag, stretched, and left the shade of the beech tree, heading for the enormous double doors that opened on to the Great Hall. He hadn't gone more than a dozen steps, however, before a gleam caught his eyes and he noticed a lovely mane of red hair glinting in the sunlight only a few yards in front of him. The owner of that hair presently had her face inches from a potions book, and was so concentrated on what she was reading from it that it was a miracle that she was able to navigate her way around the many students outside enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. Perfect.

James picked up his pace and angled his approach so as to come up right behind the girl, and then suddenly snatched her from behind, causing her to drop her book and let out a small shriek. He drew her back toward him until his mouth was next to her lightly freckled ear.

"Hey, don't tell my girlfriend, but I've had my eye on you for a while." He whispered with a light kiss to that same ear.

"James!" the girl sputtered, trying to sound indignant, but failing to keep the smile out of her voice. "Damn it, how am I supposed to get any studying done if you can't keep your hands to yourself for five minutes?" But she turned and softened her words with a kiss and a playful glint in her green eyes. "I appreciate that it turns out that you were a wet-eyed romantic all along, but really, every once in awhile you're going to have to give me some peace." And with that she expertly ducked out under his arms and bent to retrieve the book that she had dropped.

"Oh, done with the romance are you, Lils? Well then—"

And while she was still bent over, he gave her butt a firm smack, and he was rewarded with a surprised squeal.

"Nice ass!"

Before he could blink, she had spun around and had her wand pointing at him, but there was still a half smile on her face.

James, for his part, gave her his most winning smile and wink.

"I am warning you, Potter, you can't take me in a fight and you know it. You remember what I did to Barty Barrons last year…"

"Ooh, are you threatening to hex me? Now, love we shouldn't be getting into the kinky stuff in front of the first years—"

"James!"

He laughed and ducked the playful smack aimed at his head from Lily's offhand, rolled to grab her book, and smoothly sprang to his feet, transitioning into a run.

"It is nice, love!" he yelled over his shoulder, as Lily regained her bearings and chased after him, laughing.

But he didn't make it far before—CRASH!

He was knocked sideways when something collided, hard, with his left side. Dazed for a moment, all he could figure out was that someone was laying on top of him and that they were letting out the fakest, loudest girl-giggles he had ever heard. When he finally recovered from the blow, he looked up at the person's face and found his best friend Sirius lying on top of him, an awful red wig sitting lopsided on his head and his chin cradled daintily in his hands.

Sirius continued to giggle girlishly and to bat his eyelashes.

"Oh Jaames! You're so rooomantic!" He batted James's nose flirtatiously with one finger.

"Geroff Padfoot!" James gave a great heave and threw his friend off from him, going for the book, but Lily had already beaten him to it.

She was laughing, but James looked sternly back at his friend. "See what you've done?"

Sirius was unaffected by his friends admonition and still lay comfortably on the ground, elbows on the grass supporting his hands which framed his face, and his feet moving back and forth in the air daintily.

"You were just so cute and impulsive, James, a girl couldn't resist." And with that he jumped up, swept the wig off from his head, and leaned in towards James, whispering conspiratorially: "Yeah, stealing a book and playing tag on the lawn, real smooth, Prongs. I really need to teach you some moves." Then he slapped the wig on James's head and casually grabbed the lapels of his own vest jacket.

As James tore the bright red monstrosity from his head, Sirius smiled with his best lazy charm at Lily and said, "I apologize for my less romantically-advanced marauding-compatriot, lovey, I've done my best to teach him some moves, but—" and here he grabbed James tightly with one arm and gave her a long-suffering face—"it's all been in vain. He seems resistant to learning the suave manliness that I have been naturally endowed with. In fact I suspect he sadly may be mentally challenged in some mann—" But he was cut off by James tackling him to the ground.

"Geroff, geroff Prongs! Remus, help me, he's jealous of my good looks!"

For Remus had just arrived and now stood next to Lily, giving her one of those looks that they often shared when his friends were being insufferable—which was more often than not. (Other than those few gloriously peaceful hours last week when he had bewitched the two of them to spout Shakespeare whenever they spoke, causing them to initially be too embarrassed to speak, but which eventually backfired when they discovered that it was very amusing to interrupt class with heartfelt monologues about things like the pickled toad's buttocks on Slughorn's desk or the unmatched beauty of McGonagall's hair bun).

When the two finished their wrestling, (which ended with them breathlessly laying side-by-side, muttering half-hearted insults at each other—"prat" "wanker"—), Lily and Remus gave them each a hand up.

"Now, I don't know about you two, but I'm a little bit more concerned about getting some food in my belly than acting out my homoerotic fantasies." Remus said with a cheeky half-grin and turned on his heel and led the way toward the doors.

Lily giggled, but the other two were too winded to do more than wheeze out a few half-hearted protests as they leaned on each other for support, following Lily and Remus toward the Great Hall.

As they found there seats at the Gryffindor table, Lily looked up and down the table and observed, "Quite a few people are gone for the Autumn Break. Peter left too, didn't he?"

"Yes, he went on a trip to visit his aunt with his mum," Remus said, spreading marmalade on some toast.

It was five in the afternoon and they were some of the first to come in to eat. Studying in seventh year was a year-long exhaustion and they needed all the fuel they could get. But being part of that early crowd, they also were some of the first to see things go wrong.

They had all just finished filling their plates and Sirius was reaching for the jug of pumpkin juice when three bright flashes lit up the ceiling. They didn't have time to see the first two properly, taken of guard as they were, but by the last one, the eyes of everyone in the Great Hall were turned upwards: A flash of fire, about a yard in diameter, in the center of the ceiling. But before even the second flash had flared, Dumbledore was on his feet. By the time the last had faded, he was already bellowing orders into the dead silence, loud and urgent.

"Heads of houses, retrieve any students remaining outside and bring them here; Head boy and girl and prefects, do the same for any students elsewhere inside the castle. Do not worry about finding students from your own houses, bring anyone you find here, immediately. I beg you to stay calm, but to do this as quickly as possible."

Lily was on her feet almost before Dumbledore was finished speaking, dragging James with her. Remus and the other prefects, along with the teachers, followed suit. The Great Hall had exploded into whispers at the end of Dumbledore's curious and unnerving announcement, but no one questioned Dumbledore, who for his part sat back down at his chair, closed his eyes, and began muttering to himself.

It wasn't long until the teachers, prefects, and Lily and James began to return to the Hall with hordes of very confused students in tow. When more than half of the student body seemed to have taken their seats (although there was still a steady tide moving in through the doors), Dumbledore ceased muttering to himself, stood, and gave his wand a complicated little flick. Nothing seemed to happen, but he nodded to himself and looked around once again into the faces of the students as more and more of them streamed into the hall, herded by teachers and prefects.

"I do not wish to alarm any of you, but I have strong reason to believe that the school may currently be in danger, and therefore, I am enacting a lockdown of sorts. The fire that you saw minutes ago was a signal that I put into place long ago in order to forewarn me of danger in just such a situation. I have no idea what has set off the alarm. As far as I can tell, there is no identifiable source of the disruption. However, the signal is unlikely to be fooled by tricks or malfunction and while I hope that this is only a mistake, I find that possibility unlikely. Therefore, until we can determine the nature of this disturbance—"

BOOM

The candles in the Great Hall went out in an instant, along with the sun on the bewitched ceiling, and even the real sunlight filtering in through the tall windows. In a moment, the world went dark. 

BOOM

The walls and floor shook.

BOOM

A flare of green light, much larger than Dumbledore's signal, flared in the center of the floor. It crackled and grew larger, expanding rapidly until it reached almost twenty yards in every direction as students fell over and jostled each other, instinctually trying to get out of its way. Then there was a blinding flash of white light, the candles came back to life all at once, and where the green flare had been, there lay instead about a dozen people, many in cloaks.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

It was all over in moments.

"TAKE COVER!" bellowed a man from the ground, seemingly to the room at large. It was mostly unnecessary, since students were already running toward the sides of the room, away from the chaos in the center, while others were pushing back in a panic against those who still filled the doorway. Meanwhile, two of the other newcomers each shouted something, one producing a silvery thing which immediately disappeared from the tip of his wand, while the other pointed his wand at two figures next to him, who immediately seemed to disappear into thin air. These actions cost them dearly.

The three were quickly disarmed and subdued by the other half dozen or so, all but one of whom were wearing cloaks which obscured their faces.

The majority of the students were still backing up, but a few, such as Lily and the marauders, along with all of the teachers, moved to the front of the crowd, wands ready.

From the one unsubdued, uncloaked figure in the center of the floor, came a horrible, high-pitched laughter that filled the halls—a laugh that chilled to the bones.

"Tsk, tsk, kiddies," the woman said in a mocking voice, rising to her feet and sweeping a tangle of thick dark hair out of her hooded eyes. "None of that now, wouldn't want anything bad to happen—now would we Dumbles?" She looked toward Dumbledore, her dark eyes dancing in her pale face.

"Not at all," Dumbledore replied, addressing the woman as though she were merely an unexpected dinner guest. "But may I ask why you have so rudely interrupted our dining when there is a perfectly fine front door?"

The woman let out a harsh shriek of laughter as she drew herself up to her full and impressive height. "You always think you're so funny, you senile old fool, but we've got you in a corner now, powerless—just where the Dark Lord wants you." And she shrieked her horrible laugh once again.

The student body seemed to shrink back even farther as one, as though trying to get away from the awful name she had uttered as well as that awful, humorless laugh.

"Forgive me," Dumbledore said, almost apologetically, looking the woman up and down with an almost academic interest, "But I fail to follow your estimation, as there are only a handful of you and yet hundreds of us. The teaching staff alone outnumber you."

The woman seemed to find this particularly funny and doubled over giggling hysterically.

"Oh poor Dumbles, they all worship you for being so smart, yet you can't see what's in front of you. You see, you can't attack us because of your own tender morals. And because of this." She reached out as if to clutch an overturned bench near her but her hand passed right through. Then she faced Dumbledore once again, a look of triumph on her face.

"Ah," Dumbledore responded, nodding sagely. "I see—that would seem to do it."

As the woman's face broke out into a broad, arrogant smirk, a gasp came from the other side of the hall. Everyone tore their eyes away from the scene in the center to look. A tall, blonde sixth year Slytherin girl was staring at the woman, transfixed. James recognized her as Sirius's cousin, Narcissa.

"Bella?" The girl asked quietly, the word almost falling from her open mouth.

The woman's grin widened even more as she looked into the girl's face. "Hello, Cissy. But hush now, baby sister, the adults are talking."

McGonagall gained her voice back next. "Bella? Bellatrix?" She looked carefully into the woman's smug face from her vantage point in front of a group of scared-looking third years. "But—how—time travel? Like this? I've never even heard of such a thing—"

"When will you learn," Bellatrix fairly hissed between the teeth of her leering grin, "that your pathetic powers are nothing compared to that of the Dark Lord? You snivelling muggle-lovers will never know such powers as he!"

At the front of the crowd against the West Wall, James's head was spinning. There was no room for thoughts in his head, full as it was with a numb, white expanse of shock. His friends had moved to join him during the scramble, and now he shared gobsmacked expressions with Lily and Remus, while Sirius just gaped at the laughing woman in front of them, disbelief etched into every inch of his handsome face

James turned his face away from his friends to look at his teachers, who each looked just as at a loss for what to do as the rest of them, and then, as his eyes swept the hall, his gaze landed on a long-nosed face opposite from him. His enemy, Severus Snape had his black eyes fixed on the turmoil before him, a delighted grin plastered across his sallow features. A jolt of hatred went through James seeing this, but at that same moment, the stunned silence that had fallen since the declaration of the woman who called herself Bellatrix was broken by another voice.

"Bellatrix, what'll we do with them?" A deep voice asked from the shrouded inside of a dark hood—one of those who held a prisoner prone on their knees.

James looked more closely now. He thought that the man on the ground was the one who had shouted the warning. He was terrifying to look at—chunks missing out of his hair and face, the defiant expression of a man used to giving orders, and, most shockingly, a blue eye twice the size of the other, spinning freely around in its socket.

Dumbledore noticed the man too and his frown deepened.

"Alastor?" he addressed the man.

The man's smaller, darker eye turned toward Dumbledore, but his blue eye continued its rounds. "Aye. Bit of trouble, we've had on this mission, Dumbledore," the man growled.

"'Bit of trouble,'" Bellatrix mimicked in a horrible mock-baby voice, and then, in her normal, arrogant tones: "Give it up, Mad-Eye, you've been outclassed."

The man spat on the floor. "Oh I could give you spineless lumps a class alright."

James's first clear thought since the green light was, "This guy is a badass."

For the first time, the grin fell from the woman's face, which instead contorted into an insane grimace. In a second, her wand was raised and the man floated up with it, as though he were being picked up by the neck with an invisible hand. "You and your precious order," she whispered, in a furious hiss, "will die with the rest of the filth that my Lord will cleanse from this world."

The man, though unable to speak due to the now obvious constriction around his throat, answered her with a look that left no room to the imagination about what he thought of her— dirt under his shoes. She seemed to realize it too, and a red rage passed over her dark eyes for a moment, but it passed quickly, and she swished her wand, letting the man fall, hard, back to the ground. She laughed her mocking laugh once again as she turned from the man.

"We will see when all of this is over. The Dark Lord has already won, but you are too blind to see. And this is a perfect time for a demonstration, I think. Let the children of the past see what will— _did—_ happen to them if they deny the Dark Lord. Maybe they will make some more _educated_ decisions about their future choices." At this chilling declaration she swept her eyes over the gathered crowd, a hungry look in her eyes like they were all a tasty thing that she would love to get her teeth on. Her eyes seemed to linger—savoring, almost—over a few people, James and his friends being some of those few. When the twisted thing that claimed to be the future of Sirius's cousin let her eyes light giddily on James, his grip tightened on his wand and his other hand went to Sirius's—who looked like he was on the verge of springing toward her—arm, restraining him. _Not yet, Padfoot,_ James thought. _Not yet._

"We do of course," Bellatrix went on, putting on her best pouting face, "have some serious work to do, but as we are going to have to wait for a while, there's no reason that we can't have a fun little…lesson." Her face broke out into a grin and she swept over to the next uncloaked man, who was being held on his knees next to the first by two rather short, stocky people in cloaks.

She reached out her hand and stroked his thinning red hair slowly and fell into a crouch beside him. "How are we doing today, Arthur?"

The man looked resolutely forward, ignoring her completely.

"Now that's not very nice. I think I might have to teach you some manners."

She stood. "This," she announced to the room at large, "is Arthur Weasley, husband, father of seven, and one of the fools who thinks that listening to that doddering old idiot Dumbledore will get them anywhere but in the ground. A blood-traitor."

An icy jolt shot down James's spine. _Arthur Weasley._ He looked closely into the man's lined face—the red hair, the blue eyes that still remained defiantly on the far wall. He knew that face. Arthur Weasley had been a prefect in his sixth year when James was starting his first. They had never been close, but he remembered him being a kind boy, always happy to lend a helping hand to a lost first year or a fellow student in need. There was no question, despite the evidence of the years on that face, that this was the same Arthur. But there was no kindly smile there now, just steady blankness. James turned to look at Lily and found his horror mirrored in her eyes. _If that was Arthur—they had to do something. But how?_ James turned his eyes from Lily to Dumbledore, silently pleading for him to act. But Dumbledore did not move, just frowned at the scene in front of him, his eyes also taking in the aged man on the floor.

"I am going to be needing some answers anyway, but we will get to business later. Right now is all about _pleasure_." A crazed smile cracked Bellatrix's face from ear to ear, morphing her wasted beauty into a perversion of itself. She began to raise her wand once again, but was cut short by McGonagall's stern voice.

"Bellatrix—if that is who you truly are—unfortunately, it seems we cannot stop you, but surely then, that must mean you cannot do harm to us either?" She addressed her question to Bellatrix, but her eyes never left Arthur Weasley's face, a strange, intense look in her eyes.

Bellatrix, clearly annoyed at being distracted, shot back, "Obviously."

"Then what is to keep us from allowing the students to leave?" Her eyes were still on Arthur and James suddenly realized what the expression on her face was—pain, and regret.

Bellatrix, turned to leer at her, "Oh you can try, Minerva, but I'm afraid you won't like the results." She nodded at the darkened windows. "There's quite a bit of… _upheaval_ taking place in many places inside and outside the castle, and I don't think you would like what it does to tender, fleshy bodies." She smirked horribly at McGonagall, who tore her eyes from the Arthur long enough to give Bellatrix a look of unadulterated disgust, but said no more.

This only seemed to please Bellatrix, who turned her increasingly hungry eyes back onto the red-headed man before her. It seemed as though once she had her thoughts on whatever it was she planned to do, her hunger would not be sated until it was done. A horrible, horrible craving burned in her eyes as she raised her wand.

"Bella…." A husky voice intruded.

"What! _Now?"_ she shrieked, turning wild eyes onto the cloaked figure furthest to the right. He was a muscular man and was holding down the last figure, who himself was cloaked, but this cloak was gray, not the uniform black that the others wore.

"Just thought you might want to see this," the man answered, nonplussed.

Clearly annoyed, Bellatrix let out an almost childish sound of annoyance and paced over to where the man stood with his prisoner.

" _What? Rodolphus?"_

In response, the man merely pointed down at the cloaked man that he had bound with ropes and now held by the shoulders. Bellatrix frowned suspiciously and leaned down toward the person on the ground, pulling their chin up roughly. Whatever she saw in the darkness of that hood elicited the most horrible change in her yet. It was like watching clockwork going mad after a bolt burst loose. She shrieked with a horrific joy. Letting go of the cloaked person's face, she embraced the man holding him and did an ecstatic little spin. Then she laughed so hard that she fell to the floor, her face transformed into a twisted mask of wild mirth.

"YES!" she shrieked. "FINALLY! AND OF ALL TIMES!" she bellowed around at the world at large, slapping her legs and beating the floor with the violence of her laughter.

Eventually she gained enough composure back to rise again to her legs and now seemed to be possessed with a manic energy that scared the onlookers even more than her threats.  
"YOU!" she yelled at them all, her eyes fairly rolling rabidly in their sockets. "You will all get to witness the cleansing of my blood! The decimation of my shame!" She was walking around yelling, arms wide as if in welcome, pacing around and around the small group. "YOU!" And she seemed to find this word so hilarious that her eyes started watering with the apparent hilarity of it. For some reason her eyes found the Marauders whom she once again gave a hungry look, but it seemed different now somehow. They didn't keep her gaze for long though, since she wouldn't, couldn't—it seemed—deny herself whatever treat she had discovered for long. And in five, leaping steps, she made her way back to the cloaked prisoner and looked Dumbledore right in the eyes as she jerked back the hood.

At first, there was silence while everyone took in the man. He had long dark hair and dark eyes which, far from Arthur's tactic of detachment, seemed to be trying to burn the woman with the intensity of their hatred.

There was a small choking sound next to James, and he found Lily, all the blood gone from her face, looking back at him. With wide, horror-filled eyes, and a hand clamped tightly onto Sirius on the other side of her, she somehow conveyed what his own eyes did not quite comprehend. He looked back up just in time to watch as the man turned his head slowly, and James found Sirius's face looking back at him.


End file.
